


You Don't Gnome Me

by gin_eater



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Humor, Light Angst, Reluctant Fluff, Tumblr Prompt: Garden Gnomes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:17:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4514637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gin_eater/pseuds/gin_eater
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's simple, really. Continue to repent your wicked ways, make friends, build relationships..."</p><p>When Rumpelstiltskin's plans for Storybrooke take him considerably longer to implement, Cruella and Ursula do their utmost to play nice with the locals whilst they await his return, but some locals play dirty -- or just play in the dirt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't Gnome Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LiveLoveLikeMe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiveLoveLikeMe/gifts).



> This is so, so dreadfully late, my deepest apologies, but one amusing thought turned into another, and...well, now I've been staring at it for so long all I can do is post it or torch it, so. TAKE IT, for the love of god take it. And hopefully enjoy it. ;D

"Cru!" Ursula called up the stairs. "Are you ready yet? They'll be here soon!"  
  
"I'll be down in a minute, darling!"  
  
Ursula rolled her eyes. Probably Cruella intended to "make an entrance," sauntering down the stairs a calculated few seconds after the doorbell rang, like an empress at a ball thrown in her honor, or a teenage girl on prom night.  
  
It was just a housewarming party, for crying out loud. More of a get-together, really -- they still weren't on the best of terms with the majority of the town's population. Truth be told, they still weren't on the best of terms with the few people who were coming, but leave it to the most heroic of heroes to consider it their civic duty to support and encourage Ursula and Cruella's ongoing quest for redemption by doing their best to make them feel "included in the community," which meant the mutual extension and acceptance of invitations, the same bottle of cheap wine passed back and forth between households, and at least two hours of awkward conversation per intimate function, providing said conversation didn't devolve into thinly-veiled insults and the flouncing of at least one former princess from the room.  
  
This was, however, the first evening that Ursula and Cruella would be hosting such an evening themselves. Leave it to Cruella to embezzle from her own embezzling husband, socking away a modest little nest-egg in the Caribbean to the tune of ... well, with Storybrooke's outdated economy (one wondered why they even bothered to keep up the pretense of having one), they were certainly in no danger of coming up short on their tab at the Rabbit Hole anytime soon, and Cruella hadn't batted a false eyelash at charging the downpayment on the house. Of course, by that point, she would have sooner stabbed herself in the eye with the stem of a cocktail glass than be made to spend another week waking up to the greasy stink of diner food and burnt coffee at Granny's; she'd actually got misty at the new carpet smell that accompanied their four bedrooms, two and a half baths, high ceilings, and master walk-in closet, far cry though it was from her previous Long Island residence.  
  
To Ursula, it was downright palatial in comparison to her old apartment, but having lived the majority of her life in actual palaces, she found herself neither impressed by nor unappreciative of its size. The Land Without Magic had taught her nothing if not how to get by on what was available, and she was, if not content here, at least no more rankled by her circumstances than before.  
  
Well, that wasn't completely true -- the past couple of months would have been a great deal more pleasant had she been able to hang Hook under the chin by his own prosthesis like a slab of meat in the middle of the town square, but all in all, things could have been worse. She had her tentacles back, and her magic. She wasn't sure what she had with Cruella, but she knew the thought of going without it again felt like a shark was swimming circles around her heart. Maybe she'd grown too used to viewing breaking even as a victory, but if it turned out that she could keep only those three things beyond whatever happened following Rumpelstiltskin's return ...  
  
The chiming of the doorbell sent her school of thoughts scattering. She glanced up the staircase on her way to the door, sighed in annoyance, and shook her head before forcing her mouth into a simper to greet the first of their guests.  
  
"Hey, happy housewarming," said Emma Swan, handing off a beribboned bottle of Pinot noir.  
  
"We were going to bring dessert," said Regina beside her, "but _someone_ misinterpreted my request that she keep an eye on the cake in the oven while I showered to mean 'become engrossed in a Law  & Order: SVU rerun she's already seen half a dozen times and check the efficacy of our smoke detectors.' "  
  
"I couldn't help it!" the Savior muttered as they shrugged out of their jackets and hung them on the coat rack by the door. "It was season three, Olivia had short hair! And I _said_ I was sorry!"  
  
"You also said you would watch my cake. There have been days when your word has meant more."  
  
"Wine is great," Ursula said quickly. _No doubt we'll get more use out of it._ "Thank you."  
  
Swan flashed her a strained but grateful smile, and gestured around the foyer. "The place looks amazing."  
  
There had been a great deal of speculation as to the contents of the large boxes periodically delivered to the town line and painstakingly transported across it by a combination of pickup trucks, the Snow Queen's scroll, and a fivesome of strapping young former villagers just as susceptible to the fluttering eyelashes of two treacherous enchantresses as to those of damsels in distress.  
  
"Doesn't it, though?" said a plummy voice from the staircase, and Ursula fought the urge to purse her lips as Cruella made her appearance at last, clad in a little black sheath dress and heels that sank a good inch into the plush cream carpeting and still had three to spare. "You wouldn't think our tastes would blend together so well, but with a little imagination ..."  
  
"Yes, it's very ... nautical art nouveau," Regina appraised.  
  
"Precisely. That's the wonderful thing about art nouveau, everything looks as though it's just risen up out of the ocean. It's the perfect compromise. The tricky part was agreeing on a color scheme."  
  
"Like the Titanic," Swan agreed.  
  
Six eyes swiveled to stare at her.  
  
"Uh. Not the color scheme, the nouveau," she amended. "With the lines, and the flowing. But you guys'll be more successful than the Titanic, I'm sure. Um." She cleared her throat and looked at Ursula. "Is it too early for wine?"  
  
" _Never,_ " said Ursula. "I'll just go uncork -- uh, uncap this -- and meet you in the living room."

"Screw top?" she heard Regina hiss as Cruella led them deeper into the house. "You brought _screw top wine_ to a dinner party thrown by Cruella de Vil and the former queen of the seven fucking seas?"  
  
"I panicked, okay? I just grabbed one!"  
  
"I have _never_ been so humiliated ..."  
  
Well, Ursula thought, at least that was something.  
  
By half-past seven, everyone else had trickled in -- Belle French-Gold-French, who moved as though she were attempting to keep her back to the wall at all times, accompanied by that cute little werewolf waitress who managed to somehow always be on break whenever Ursula and Cruella stopped in for a drink; and David and Mary Margaret, who even Cruella had to admit did a decent job of upholding the suburban tradition of hating their neighbors' guts and showing it by trying to blind them with the brightness of their Colgate smiles and making passive-aggressive remarks as to the placement of their perennial bulbs.  
  
Tonight, for instance, they had brought ... to be quite honest, _box_ wine would have been an improvement.  
  
"It's a garden gnome," Mary Margaret said proudly, thrusting the statuette into a horrified Cruella's hands.  
  
"O-oh," she stammered, holding the thing by manicured fingertips. "Of course, darling. It's, ah ... charming."  
  
"No," said David, grinning broadly, " _I'm_ Charming. That's a gnome."  
  
Cruella used it to bludgeon him over the head until his skull cracked open and one eye popped free from its socket--  
  
\--in her mind, of course; behind a smile that looked as though it might lead in to a shriek. Ursula rested a wary, warning hand at the small of her back.  
  
"We thought you could put it out front," Mary Margaret suggested. "With your daffodils."  
  
"We don't have daffodils," said Ursula.  
  
"Oh no, you do! The people who lived here before you did. In fact, they should be popping up any day now. What is it they mean again?" She smacked her husband on the chest, as if there was a button beneath all that unfortunate tatersall check whereby he would spit out the answer.  
  
"Uh, chivalry, I think, isn't it?"  
  
Apparently there was.  
  
"Right, chivalry! And happiness. New beginnings! That's perfect, right?"  
  
"Perfect," Cruella echoed tightly, while Ursula's eyebrows diplomatically ascended her forehead in a mute show of ... not-disagreement. "Well. The others are in the lounge. Would you like a drink? I could use another drink. Ursula, darling, join me in the kitchen?"  
  
She all but bowled the gnome under the sink and slammed the cabinet door shut behind it.  
  
"Those smug little _prats,_ " she growled, dumping the halfway melted ice out of her martini shaker and filling it with fresh. "Of all the garish, godawful ..." Gin, vermouth ...  
  
"We don't have to put it out," Ursula quietly reasoned.  
  
Little more gin ...  
  
"Oh, yes, we do," Cruella argued, rattling the shaker to keep her voice from carrying discernibly into the next room. "It is representational of our mutually tolerant alliance; to not display it would be to throw the last eight weeks of _please_ and _thank you_ and _oh, what an adorable jumper, you simply_ must _tell me where you got it_ right out the window. I am _not_ going back to square one for these people, my teeth can't take the grinding!"  
  
"Cru, you're overreacting. It's just a lawn ornament. The only thing it's representational of is the Charmings' continuing sense of bad taste."  
  
"Forgive me, darling, but having _had_ a lawn for the majority of the past thirty years, I'm a lot more well-versed in this game than you are, and _that_ \--" She gestured at the cabinet with one hand and strained with the other. "--is a test."  
  
"You think because I lived in an apartment I'm unable to comprehend the sophisticated level of political intrigue best exhibited by an episode of Desperate Housewives? I ruled the fucking _ocean,_ Cruella, and not unsuccessfully, either."  
  
Cruella winced. "Okay, yes, that came out poorly," she admitted, "but this isn't the ocean, darling. On a larger stage, it might not matter, but this playing field isn't even a field, it's ... it's a game of bloody table tennis! And it's petty, and it's _stupid,_ but this is the one town -- the _one town_ \-- in all this wretched world where magic is not only possible, but sustainable, and unless Gold's plan bears fruit, here is _all_ there is for us!"  
  
Two olives met their fate at the vicious end of a toothpick before they were plopped in her glass, which was at her lips before she even left the room, leaving Ursula to stare bemusedly at the swinging door.  
  
"Guess I'm getting _their_ drinks, then ..."

 

* * *

 

 

Ursula's fists tightened around the edge of the duvet as she felt Cruella flop from her front to her back for what must have been the hundredth time that night.  
  
They hadn't spoken much since the party, which had ended on not too awkward a note at around ten. All in all, the night hadn't been the disaster it could have been. The werewolf knew fashion, which had gone over well with Cruella, and the Savior had done them the favor of being the first to begin eating, which had held off the others from rudely sniffing the food. Regina had scowled when the coffee was served without accompaniment, but everyone agreed that they were much too full for dessert, anyway. Even the Charmings had been on their best behavior, hideous gift notwithstanding, for their daughter's sake if nothing else.  
  
Still, Cruella had been atypically quiet and distracted while they'd cleaned up and got ready for bed, and their goodnight kisses that usually turned into goodnight groping and then goodnight sex had grown softer instead of more ambitious, and they'd drifted from cuddles to sleep without much fanfare -- or, thanks to Cruella's mattress acrobatics, success.  
  
"Darling?"  
  
"Hn."  
  
"Are you awake?"  
  
"No."  
  
Cruella rolled over to play big spoon.  
  
"I can't sleep," she complained. "I can _feel_ it."  
  
"Feel what?"  
  
" _It._ The troll. Downstairs, in the cupboard."  
  
"It's an inanimate object, Cruella, it's harmless. Tacky, but harmless."  
  
"You can't be sure of that. Not here."  
  
"So go put it outside, then."  
  
" _Ugh._ "  
  
"Then take a Xanax and pass out. Those are your options."  
  
"Fine, I'll deal with the wretched thing." Cruella kicked herself free of the covers and sat up, only to flop back down a moment later, her lips at Ursula's neck. "Come with me?"  
  
The sea witch groaned. "Baby, come on, it's two in the fucking morning."  
  
Cruella cooed happily. "I like when you call me baby."  
  
"I like when you _let me sleep._ "  
  
"Which I will be more than willing to do once the troll has been banished. Please, darling?" She nibbled enticingly at the shell of Ursula's ear. "I don't want to be alone with it, it's ... _creepy._ "  
  
"Cru, last week you ordered half the spiders in Maine to cover a bartender while he slept because you thought he was making your drinks too weak. _That_ was creepy."  
  
" _That_ was brilliant. He was filling top shelf bottles with bottom shelf goods; he deserved to know what it feels like to expect one thing and be quite unpleasantly surprised by another."  
  
Ursula snorted softly. "Listen to you, punishing the deceitful. You sure you're not faking the heroic funk a little too well?" Her eyes finally opened at the scolding smack Cruella delivered to her backside.  
  
"Bite your tongue." The sea witch felt her shrug and nuzzle closer, her offending hand skimming over Ursula's hip to her stomach. "Or bite mine ..."  
  
Ursula laced their fingers together, halting Cruella's progress, and sighed.  
  
"I'm going to be awake until I humor you, aren't I?"  
  
"Or until you exhaust me." Cruella kissed her shoulder. "The choice is yours."  
  
Ursula considered this, running the pad of her thumb over the back of Cruella's hand.  
  
"You drive a hard bargain," she said.  
  
"I drive a lot of things," Cruella pointed out.  
  
"Yeah: me, up a wall."  
  
"You, wild, darling." Cruella's hand resumed its southward course and slipped beneath the hem of Ursula's nightdress.  
  
Ursula closed her eyes again with a second, softer sigh, and allowed it.

 

* * *

 

 

Cruella woke to the smell of coffee -- gloriously fresh, high quality coffee -- and an empty bed.  
  
This wasn't unusual: years of steady blue collar work had made Ursula a habitually early riser, even on mornings after Cruella had kept her up late. They were becoming so domesticated, it was ridiculous, really ... and, all right, perhaps a tiny bit wonderful. To sleep and wake together with no obligations to attend -- no jobs, no husbands, no kingdoms to govern or household staff to kidnap, no artifacts of magical lore or children of magical parentage to go gallivanting after; no one else to be but themselves for the first time in decades, even if they did have to pull their social punches here and there. Granted, it wasn't killing or singing, but ...  
  
That damned _but_ had been hanging in the air far too often of late, like a spider on a thread, no matter how often she ordered it back up to the rafters.  
  
Cruella located her negligée on the floor and slipped into both it and dressing gown before making her way downstairs.  
  
She found Ursula in the breakfast nook, seated at the table and paging through a volume of Leroux while one extended tentacle sautéed eggs and what remained of the previous evening's shrimp cocktail from across the room. She was already dressed.  
  
"Where are you off to?" Cruella asked.  
  
Ursula glanced at her over her shoulder. "Belle French called this morning. Said she wanted to get my opinion on some marine relic she dug up in the back room of the pawn shop."  
  
"Does she now," Cruella mumbled, slouching into the booth opposite her and reaching for the fuller of the two coffee mugs occupying table near the French press. "And you thought you'd just skip right over? Why doesn't she just ask the rum-guzzling human hat rack about it?"  
  
The tentacle snapped the pan to flip the eggs. "Because that would be like asking a monkey how to work a universal remote. The ability to press buttons doesn't mean you know what the fuck they're for."  
  
Cruella snickered. "As evidenced by the majority of men every world over."  
  
"I'll take your word for that."  
  
"It would be yours, then, wouldn't it, this thing? If it's authentically Atlantican."  
  
"Probably not, if Rumpel was fastidious about his invoices. Which, being Rumpel, he probably has every last one categorized and cross-referenced by name, date, land, type, and level of Schadenfreude he derived from the exchange."  
  
"It's from your realm, though; it certainly shouldn't belong to anyone up here."  
  
"Didn't I hear you bitching once about a Ming vase you were going to lose to China's reclamation of items of cultural heritage?"  
  
"It was a painted scroll from the Song dynasty, and that was different."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
Cruella shrugged. "They weren't you."  
  
Ursula smiled. A second tentacle got out two plates from the cupboard, and the first dished up breakfast. Cruella didn't so much as lift her fork before adding a copious amount of black pepper to her eggs, while Ursula reached immediately for the salt.  
  
They ate in silence, Ursula returning to her book until Cruella slid it over to herself and whirled it around to peruse the pages, more an act of petulance at her girlfriend paying attention to something that wasn't _her_ than one of real interest in The Phantom of the Opera.  
  
Ursula, accustomed to this, bore it with habitual patience.  
  
"Always thought Christine should have ended up with that little ballerina," Cruella mused. "What's-her-name."  
  
"Meg Giry?"  
  
"Mm."  
  
"They were only friends in the musical. In the book they hardly even interact."  
  
"Well. Books don't always get their stories right."  
  
"Hm," Ursula agreed. "That they don't."  
  
Appeased, Cruella slid the book back, but Ursula closed it, downed the last of her coffee, and stood.  
  
"I gotta get going."  
  
Cruella pouted. "Must you?"  
  
"Table tennis, remember?" She leaned down to kiss the sneer off the other witch's face. "I'll probably be an hour, tops. Oh, and I ran the dishes through this morning. It'd be nice if you could actually put them away instead of just treating the dishwasher like a spare china hutch."  
  
Cruella tutted peevishly. "What does it matter? We use the same dishes over and over again anyway; that's rather the _point_ of dishes."  
  
"No, the _point_ is that we agreed to divvy up the housework down the middle until the rumors that our basement is a torture chamber blow over and the local maid service doesn't treat our money like it's been dipped in contact poison."  
  
" _Our_ money now, is it?"  
  
"... Make that two hours," said Ursula.  
  
"Make it three," Cruella muttered, pulling the book over again and flipping to a random page, needing something to look at that wasn't Ursula's undoubtedly dismayed expression, well aware that she was smudging a very important line with her toe.  
  
They'd agreed, before the house, before they'd even fallen asleep that first night at Granny's, that the full and complete combination of their abilities and resources -- monetary, magical, even automotive -- was the only way any of this was going to work, be it the plan or their ... well, "the plan" had covered a multitude of sins that seemed to grow more numerous each day, and the longer things went on, the more Cruella was loath to lose them. Mind, she had no desire to establish herself _permanently_  in this godforsaken little town, nor would she mourn the loss of her acquaintance with its residents, but ...  
  
Damn it! There it was again!  
  
Really, the whole ruse wasn't the ordeal Cruella made it out to be. One would have imagined a redemptive quest to require a little more visible effort, but no one seemed to expect much of anything from them beyond an absence of certain prior behaviors. As Ursula had pointed out to her one evening when Cruella had mused upon this aloud, even Regina still drove a Mercedes.  
  
Ursula, who made this this whole damned masquerade not only bearable, but enjoyable. How tedious it would have been for Cruella to have to do this on her own -- like the last thirty vapid, flavorless years spent interacting with people who talked a good haughty game but had nothing but money upon which to found their assertions of personal superiority. People who loved to wear the diamonds but lacked the guts to pry them out of the hand reaching up from the rubble at the mouth of a caved-in mine.  
  
It felt so _good_ to be with someone who truly understood again; to push against someone who neither rolled over nor pushed back, but who instead knew exactly which blows to weather and when to grab Cruella by the wrists, spread her arms wide, and pull her closer.  
  
Gallingly fantastic creature.  
  
Ursula had taken care of the troll, too, Cruella saw through the kitchen window as she rinsed her plate -- there it was, in the midst of a patch of greenery in the middle of the yard, its squat little back to the house, ridiculous red hat spearing toward the sky like the world's most mawkish traffic cone.  
  
She grimaced. To think, on a lawn belonging to _her.  
_  
_Blech._  
  
Ursula was wonderful, but also damned inconvenient to Cruella's lilliputian capacity for guilt, which wasn't exactly a sense of remorse as it was a nagging, troublesome desire to make the former sea queen _happy_ \-- and as neither of them were one for apologies ...  
  
Cruella curled her lip once more for good measure, then made her way back upstairs to brush her teeth and dress, and perhaps and make the bed, which Ursula liked. She would put the blasted dishes away, too, and maybe reload the washer -- there were only their breakfast things in the sink, but she could probably rest on the laurels of having gone above and beyond the call of domestic duty for close to a week, if she milked it properly ...

 

* * *

 

 

So it was that she found herself around an hour and a half later, bottle of Windex in one rubber-gloved hand and a wad of paper towels clutched in the other, scrubbing the front picture window in furious pursuit of an advertised streak-free shine, because Ursula had a _thing_ about glass. You could take the fish out of the aquarium ...  
  
Cruella startled back as a blip of dark blue movement emerged at the perimeter of the window, and snapped the curtains shut. Yes, she was doing this, but she wasn't about to advertise the fact.  
  
Thirty seconds. That should be plenty long enough for the intruder to clear the property.  
  
Cruella peeked.  
  
The coast was clear, save the insufferably smirking face of the troll in the bed of supposedly-daffodils.  
  
"What are _you_ looking at?" Cruella snarled, and went back to scrubbing with a venge--  
  
Wait.  
  
She paused, and looked again.  
  
No smirk. No face at all. Just the back of a barrel-shaped little body in blue tunic and brown trousers.  
  
Odd.  
  
She hadn't time to ponder the matter further, however, as the familiar, comforting purr of a V12 engine approached the house, heralding Ursula's return.  
  
Cruella sprang into action, snapping off her gloves and rushing to dispose of the evidence of her foray into the custodial arts, because she never put effort into anything without the intention that the end product would appear to have been effortless. The rules of villainy she could bend as necessity dictated, but the rules of elegance? The gnome had already exceeded what she could endure of _that_ for the day.  
  
She stowed mop and bucket in the pantry and everything else beneath the sink, and in a move more athletic than many would have given her credit for, skittered into the lounge and vaulted over the back of the sofa, clicked on the television and affected a highly interested expression just as the front door deadbolt tumbled home.  
  
"Oh, darling!" she called. "You're back! Just in time for, er ..."  
  
"... An egg in a tube?" Ursula asked, coming up behind her.  
  
"W-well, this is the ad break, of course. But there's a documentary on, you know, fish and ..." Cruella fluttered her fingers in the air. "... other aquatic fiddle-faddle, it's riveting. But that's not important now!" She turned off the set and tossed the remote on the chair furthest away from where she sat. "Tell me what the maid had to offer."  
  
Ursula rolled her eyes and sank down next to her on the sofa, toeing off her sandals and tucking her legs underneath her, and Cruella lay down to rest her head in the sea witch's lap.  
  
" 'Aquatic fiddle-faddle' about sums it up. A tuning fork with one bent tine. Gold had it inventoried as ..."  
  
Cruella reached up, brushing her fingers through Ursula's hair. "As what, darling?"  
  
"As originally belonging to my mother."  
  
Cruella's fingers stilled. "Did it?"  
  
Ursula shook her head. "She had perfect pitch, she never needed one. I told French it probably belonged to the court composer, and she should adjust her asking price accordingly."  
  
"Bloody heroes," Cruella murmured. "They're like ... blind candystripers working a burn ward with carts full of salt and lemon juice."  
  
"Mm," Ursula agreed, rolling her lips and returning the hair-stroking favor. "Speaking of lemons, is that Pine-Sol I smell?"  
  
Cruella sniffed delicately. "Well _somebody_ had to tidy up. This horrid little house is bad enough without it also smelling like a pigsty."  
  
Ursula bent to kiss her. "Thank you."  
  
Cruella pouted down a smile, and shrugged indifferently. "The kitchen floor was ghastly. You'd think we'd plated last night's puttanesca via cannon; I was nearly ill."  
  
"That must have been very hard for you."  
  
"Excruciating, darling."  
  
Ursula kissed her again, and Cruella chased her up when she pulled away, one kiss linking into another and another as they shifted positions, until Cruella sat astride Ursula's lap, Ursula's hands smoothing up her back beneath her shirt while Cruella fingered free the buttons of the sea witch's blouse.  
  
Cruella gasped, neck arching as Ursula's mouth did some truly salacious things to her throat, pluming desire beneath the whole of her skin. She writhed and pressed close, spearing her fingers encouragingly through dark blonde waves, and opened her eyes with the intent of watching the stars that kindled behind them burn out against the canvas of space in front of her -- only to startle so violently she toppled backwards off of Ursula's lap and onto the floor, bashing the back of her head against the edge of the coffee table in the process.  
  
"The fuck--?!" Ursula exclaimed, sliding down to kneel beside her. "Jesus, are you okay?"  
  
But Cruella was already scrambling to her feet, holding the back of her head with one hand and clawing her way up to kneel on the sofa with the other.  
  
"It was there!" she swore. "It was there, I fucking saw it!"  
  
"What? _What_ was there?"  
  
"The _thing!_ " Cruella hissed fiercely. "The troll! _The gnome,_ it was at the window, staring in at us!"  
  
Ursula raised up to peer past the sofa, where the view of their front yard was obstructed by neither curtains nor Scandinavian statuette.  
  
She looked at Cruella in concern.  
  
"Baby, how hard did you hit your head?"  
  
Cruella grimaced. "No, no, I saw it _before_ I fell! And earlier, when you were gone -- it was still in the garden but it had turned round to watch the house!"  
  
"When you were cleaning, you mean?"  
  
"Yes!"  
  
"What products did you use?"  
  
Cruella rolled her eyes. "A mixture of ammonia and bleach," she snapped, "just as any other intelligent adult would do. I used Pine-Sol and Windex, darling; I am _not_ hallucinating. It was _right there,_ it would have left nose grease on the glass if it could have done!"  
  
Ursula felt her tentacles unfurl in unease. Bracing herself for what she might find, she made her way over to the picture window and looked outside.  
  
"He's right where I left him: in the daffodils."  
  
"What?" Cruella joined her at the window. "Well then he must have run back when he got caught playing peeping tom! I _knew_ there was something off about that blasted thing the instant that dreadful woman handed it off. What if it has a spy camera for an eyeball?" She gasped and clutched her necklace as her mind connected the depraved dots. "Oh, those sneaky, lecherous--"  
  
Ursula cut her off, "Cruella, the Charmings did not plant a garden gnome in our yard with the intention of making a secret sex tape of us."  
  
"Oh, please, darling, it's practically the first chapter of Blackmail for Dummies. My husband fell for it twice over."  
  
"For the sex tape or the garden gnome? --Nevermind. The point remains that if they were trying to discredit us, evidence of an active sex life wouldn't do much more than paint _them_ as perverts. We're villains, not Republicans -- and yes, I realize there's a substantial Venn diagram overlap there, but we are not in that intersectional oval. And besides, there are less convoluted ways they could have accomplished that goal."  
  
"Have you _seen_ the Charming family tree? 'Convoluted' may well be a congenital disease." Ursula opened her mouth to protest, and Cruella quickly added, "Well it wouldn't hurt to _check,_ darling, would it?"  
  
Ursula ran an exasperated hand down her face. "All right, all right, I'll go take a look at it. But if I don't find anything weird ..."  
  
Cruella held up her hands. "I will drop it like a cat off a hot tin roof."  
  
She folded her arms and watched hesitatingly through the window as Ursula inspected their uninvited guest outside. The sea witch picked it up. Knocked on it. Paid an obnoxious amount of attention to its eyes, tapping each one with her fingernail. She looked under the feet for wheels or tread, and made certain its arms and legs weren't in any way jointed for movement.  
  
Finally she replaced it as it was, turned toward the house, and put up her hands in the universal gesture of I Don't Fucking Know.  
  
" _Nothing?_ " Cruella asked when she'd come back inside.  
  
"Not that I can tell." Ursula shrugged. "No enchantments. No cameras. It's ugly, but it's on the level."  
  
Cruella sighed noisily, then hissed and ducked away when the sea witch reached behind her head with a tentacle to prod at the growing bump there.  
  
"You should ice that," Ursula told her.  
  
"I should _ice_ the bloody gnome," Cruella groused, then froze, the proverbial lightbulb clicking on above her head.  
  
"What?" asked Ursula.  
  
"Hm?" Cruella shook her head. "Nothing, darling, nothing. Let's just ... forget this whole nonsense and pick up where we left off. Okay?"  
  
Ursula's brow furrowed as Cruella flirtatiously coiled a lock of blonde hair around her finger.  
  
"Okay ... Are you sure you're feeling all right?"  
  
"Fine, darling, perfectly fine! Although it's true I could feel _better_ ..."

 

* * *

 

 

Cruella didn't feel better.  
  
Ursula hadn't been at all trusting of her sudden alteration in mood, and they'd spent an hour on the sofa actually _watching_ television while Cruella was made to hold a bag of frozen peas to the back of her head, twenty minutes on and twenty minutes off. Following that, it had started raining, which had rendered any form of leaving the house without arousing suspicion impossible.  
  
It wasn't until six that she'd managed to buy herself a half-hour reprieve, in the form of a request for Chinese takeaway for dinner, but not ten minutes into her hunt through the house for an instrument which might quickly test her theory, it became woefully apparent that the outward appearance of heroism hadn't left a great many opportunities to stock up on the necessities. A funny little card of a man who called himself Ace mowed their lawn and pulled weeds for fifty dollars a week, and neither of them gardened, which left their garage bereft of anything appropriately heavy or bladed; the rain had ensured the troll was drenched, so a trial by fire was right out; her derringer lacked a silencer; and the most corrosive substances they owned these days were Cruella's wit and Ursula's withering glares.  
  
Really, the only thing that stood a chance of getting the job done was--  
  
"Shit," she muttered, ducking back inside the house as the garage door whirred to life and began to rise.  
  
But she had her answer. She'd just have to wait until Ursula fell asleep tonight, and then ...

 

* * *

 

 

Cruella's hands tightened around the steering wheel. She stared at the empty space in the middle of the daffodil patch, illumined by the Panther's headlights, and swore sharply: "Oh Jesus fucking wept!"  
  
She looked around the lawn, the hair on her arms and the back of her neck raising.  
  
Perhaps someone had stolen it?  
  
Her gaze darted to the open garage door, and from there the unlocked door that led into the house.  
  
Someone had bloody well better have stolen it.  
  
She swallowed dryly, eased the Panther back into the garage, and hit the button on the remote to drop the door down.  
  
Scenes from horror films she'd once cackled at rolled behind her eyes in a series of severed Achilles tendons and, ultimately, doom.  
  
It was two steps to the house door if she leapt, and an unbidden memory came to her of the way her husband's nettlesome little granddaughter had more than once traversed their very expensive lounge room furniture with a declaration that the ground was lava.  
  
"This is ridiculous," she chastised herself. "Utterly fucking ridiculous. And besides, if it has any sense at all, it's already inside."  
  
... She'd slept in her car before.  
  
And if the thing got Ursula, well, it would serve her right for her disbelief.  
  
Then again, Cruella would probably be blamed for her death, and the town was largely comprised of erstwhile rustic peasantry, pitchfork-and-torch aficionados all.  
  
"Oh, damn it all," she grumbled, and opened her car door.  
  
The door to the house was accomplished in two impressive if undignified bounds, and it might have slammed shut behind her had she not caught it at the last second by the bracing insertion of her fingers between the metal and the jamb.

Cruella grit her teeth and cursed a blue streak under her breath as she shook the pain out of her hand, but instinct told her not to linger long.  
  
Should she get a knife from the kitchen? Yes. And hope that one wasn't already missing from its holder ...  
  
One wasn't. Good.  
  
She checked the downstairs thoroughly, keeping an ear open for the patter of approaching paw-- _feet._  
  
Cruella shook her head and crept up the staircase, old habits telling her to step near the edges, even though the carpeting kept any creaks that might betray her movements to a minimum.  
  
In their bedroom, Ursula's chest rose and fell at the languid pace of a sound sleep, and even Cruella's paranoia couldn't keep her from becoming momentarily distracted by how perfect she looked, how nearly luminescent, golden hair splayed across her pillow, brown skin blued by moonlight, as close as she ever got on land to how she must appear underwater.  
  
The thought was affecting, in ways both good and bad.  
  
Cruella pointedly ignored the bad -- Ursula was here _now._ That was what mattered most. Cruella was, after all, a very _now_ sort of person; she'd even employed Veruca Salt as an alias a time or two, during a stint in Vegas that the city had promised to keep to itself.  
  
She stashed the knife between mattress and headboard as she climbed carefully into bed, and bit back a yelp as Ursula stirred, and something cool and soft and heavy snared her around her legs and waist, evoking a spike of old fear before her back was pulled into a soft, familiar heat.  
  
She hunkered into it, and felt more cloaked than cornered, but didn't close her eyes.

 

* * *

 

 

Ursula jumped at the sound of ceramic shattering against stainless steel.  
  
She looked over at Cruella, who was looking out the kitchen window, face gone white as the left half of her hair.  
  
"Baby?" she asked.  
  
Cruella shook herself and blinked rapidly.  
  
"Cup slipped," she mumbled. "That's all."  
  
Ursula watched her pick up the shards of her coffee mug with trembling hands.

"Are those bruises?" she asked.

"What? No." Cruella rubbed at one of the marks with the pad of her thumb. "No, I just ... got a little careless with the brow gel this morning."

"It's not coming off."

"Well I don't pay fifty-three dollars per kit for weak pigment, darling."

Ursula's gaze narrowed. "How's your head?"  
  
"Oh for the love of-- It's _fine._  Honestly." Cruella smiled, eyes a little too wide. There were faint shadows beneath them, as if she hadn't slept very well. "Actually, I'm feeling a little stir-crazy -- why don't you and I get out of the house for a bit today? We could go to the lake or something. Picnic lunch, bottle or two -- or three -- of wine ..."  
  
Ursula regarded her doubtfully, but "... Sure," she agreed, and Cruella seemed to both brighten with enthusiasm and droop with relief.  
  
"Excellent, good! I'll go get dressed!"  
  
She hurried from the room. Ursula took her place at the sink, and looked outside.  
  
Placid street view. Daffodils. Gnome ass.  
  
Shaking her head, she made for the wine cabinet in the dining room, and wondered what paired well with bullshit.

 

* * *

  

Cruella sighed as she stretched out on their fluffy blanket, swimsuit top unhooked, allowing the sun to roast her back unimpeded.  
  
"Don't let me burn," she ordered before taking off her sunglasses, dropping her face into her arms, and promptly dozing off.  
  
Ursula studied her as she swirled the last of the Chardonnay in her glass -- still her first, while Cruella had downed three before her jitteriness at last straggled into something closer to her habitual blasé indifference.  
  
Something was off with her, to put it mildly.  
  
The sea witch smoothed a hand over the back of Cruella's sun-warm head, and was relieved to feel that yesterday's bump had gone down considerably. The more she thought about it, too, the more apparent it became that Cruella had been acting strangely, in spits and spurts, for some weeks now. For all the furmonger was high-maintenance, she wasn't especially high-strung, but the longer they spent in Storybrooke the more squirrelly she seemed to become.  
  
It made sense, Ursula supposed as she slipped out of her coverup and made her way towards the fresh water for a dip; how could a place like this _not_ dredge up past feelings, even of their lives without magic? The last time they'd faced a circumstantial upheaval of this magnitude hadn't been a fantastic experience for either of them, after all. They hadn't even been a "they," in the end.  
  
Well, not "the end," though they hadn't known that at the time. But now, even though it was their respective endings they actively sought ...  
  
_Unless Gold's plan bears fruit, here is_ all _there is for us!_  
  
It wasn't, though, not _all_ \-- Ursula, at least, could now open a portal to at minimum one other realm. If things went south, she could flee. Cruella knew that.  
  
Perhaps, then, it was the "us" upon which the true emphasis lay. Was Cruella afraid that Ursula would leave her to the debatable mercy of the heroes? Or was it something else altogether?  
  
Ursula drifted some thirty feet below the surface of the water, tentacles curling aimless and lazy, and watched the last of the air in her lungs leave her lips in small bubbles that ballooned gradually in size as they ascended. The lake was still, almost entirely without current, but even so she could feel tug of the river that branched from it, and beyond that, the great eddy of the sea.  
  
She wondered what her voice would sound like, singing the songs her people had written about her before she'd vanished. The scolions decrying her most heinous deeds. The cradlesongs full of quiet warning. She wondered how many more had been written since, that rejoiced in her disappearance and prayed that she never, ever return.  
  
In a flare and snap of tentacles, Ursula shot to the surface, arching to whip back her hair as her torso buoyed up from the water.  
  
Air in her lungs again, so commonplace anymore that it felt almost natural. Cruella still catnapping on the beach.  
  
Ursula left the water on two legs and knelt down beside the other witch on the blanket. Cruella uncovered was a familiar sight to her, but for all the toplofty woman's idle flirtations and general lack of boundaries, she almost never allowed herself to be so exposed in public. Had anyone else been here, the long wrap of her skirt would have stayed on, shielding the pale scars on her legs from view. She would never have closed her eyes, let alone allowed herself to sleep so splayed and susceptible.  
  
Perhaps Ursula's presence had something to do with that -- lent her a sense of comfort she so rarely found beyond the scope of material luxury -- but there was something else, too. There was something about this town, Ursula thought, this isolated little pocket of fairyland, that had a way of changing things. Maybe it was the antithesis of so much magic existing in a place it wasn't welcome. The whole town was swimming against the current of the natural laws here -- was it really so absurd that the natures of those it sheltered might gradually begin to do the same?  
  
They weren't turning _good,_ Ursula was sure of that, but ... _something_ was happening. The presence of the Savior and absence of the Dark One? Spheres of influence were strange when it came to magic, far-reaching but subtle. Flowers bloomed more brightly, or withered more quickly. One village might be flush with good health, and another susceptible to chronic illnesses. That the Charmings' unassuming-looking girl-child seemed to have wormed her way into even Regina's blackened heart spoke not only of the nature of her power, but its magnitude. Even the Dark One's lover wasn't completely despondent here, with the wolf playing stand-in for her beast, propping up the weeping ceiling of her heart.  
  
Ursula chewed contemplatively on her bottom lip. She rested a hand upon the lightly freckled skin of Cruella's back, after twenty minutes already slightly pink and radiating heat.  
  
"Hey," she said, securing Cruella's bikini top. "Cruella."  
  
"Hmm?" Cruella moaned at Ursula's gentle jostling of her shoulder.  
  
"Turn over before you char."  
  
Cruella gave a little grunt of assent, flipped onto her back and donned her sunglasses.  
  
She bolted upright an instant later, tearing them off and shading her eyes with her hand.  
  
"You've got to be _fucking_ kidding me ..."  
  
"What?" Ursula followed her line of sight, but there was nothing aside from the trees and distant back of a ritzy lakeside home. "What is it?"  
  
"You didn't see it?"  
  
"See what?"  
  
But Cruella was already clambering to her feet, haphazardly packing away the wine glasses.  
  
"We're going home," she said shortly. " _Now._ "  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Just -- just do as I say!"  
  
Ursula balked, eyes and mouth wide in offended astonishment.  
  
"Oh I hardly fucking think so."  
  
"Goddamn it, Ursula--"  
  
"No! Not until you tell me what the hell's going on with you today!"  
  
Cruella growled in frustration and continued tugging at the blanket, which wasn't going anywhere until Ursula did.  
  
"There's no _time,_ darling, I'll tell you when we get home, all right? I promise."  
  
"You'll tell me in the car."  
  
"Fine, I'll tell you in the sodding car, just _move!_ "  
  
Ursula moved, and in under a minute they were on the highway, the Panther's speedometer climbing to an impressive number, even by Cruella's standards.  
  
"Okay, talk," the sea witch ordered, knuckles going pale as she gripped the passenger's side armrest when Cruella throttled around a curve.  
  
"We have to beat it to the house," the other witch muttered.  
  
"Beat what to the house?"  
  
"Oh, you'll see when we get there, darling," she vowed.

 

* * *

 

 

The car screeched to a halt at the end of their street.  
  
" _No,_ " she breathed, shaking her head as she stared at their yard. "No, fuck you, you are _not_  doing this to me!"  
  
The thud of her foot against the accelerator was like the lightning strike before a thunderous peal of burning rubber and squealing tires.  
  
"Cruella ..." Ursula cautioned her. "Cruella, slow down ... Baby? -- _Cruella you cannot Tokyo fucking Drift into our driveway, slow the fuck down!_ "  
  
Cruella slowed down -- or more accurately, she slammed on the brakes halfway through their yard after ramming headlong through the daffodil patch, sending up clods of grass and topsoil.  
  
"Did I get it? Did I get it?!" Hands aquiver, she unbuckled her seatbelt and leapt from the car, leaving Ursula swallow her heart back into place and perform a cursory check for whiplash.  
  
"HAH!" she heard Cruella caw in triumph from behind the the car. "HAHAHA! Relay _that_ back to your masters, you stunted little Santa Claus from hell!"  
  
" _CRUELLA._ "  
  
Cruella turned, panting slightly, a manic grin unhinging her features.  
  
"Darling, look!" She proudly indicated the debris, amongst which the Charmings' housewarming gift lay tread-marked and split down the middle from the weight of the car. "I did it! It _must_ be enchanted, or I'd have never been able to hit it!"  
  
"You prepped our lawn for trench warfare so you could assassinate a goddamn garden gnome?"  
  
Cruella's grin faltered. "Well, when you put it like that, of course it sounds mad, but darling it was stalking me!"  
  
"Oh, well, that sanes the situation right up."  
  
"No, it -- it _was,_ I tell you! It--"  
  
"Um," a concerned voice from the sidewalk interrupted, "is ... is everything okay here?"  
  
A timid-looking novice nun regarded them with a mix of worry and disapproval.  
  
"Everything's fine," Ursula answered before Cruella could, forcing a smile. "Just a little accident. Don't worry, it's our yard." She turned to Cruella and said lowly, "We'll talk about this inside."

 

* * *

 

"Don't look at me like that," Cruella said in their foyer, reaching automatically to stroke the lapel of her coat, realizing she was still clad only in swimsuit and sandals, and crossing her arms instead. "I know what I saw."  
  
"Care to fill _me_ in?" Ursula asked. "Because all I saw was you acting like a crazy person!"  
  
"And so what if I was?" Cruella shouted. "How would you behave if you had something constantly dogging your heels?"  
  
"Then why didn't you say anything?"  
  
"I _did!_ You decided I was being daft, remember? When I saw it at the lake today, I thought if we got home fast enough and you could see for yourself that it wasn't in the garden you might actually take me seriously -- or at least be on _my_ side!"  
  
"I _am_ on your side, baby, but I--"  
  
"Don't you _dare_ 'baby' me right now, I am not a child to be mollified! Just because you don't fucking see something happening or, or don't want to acknowledge it, doesn't mean it isn't going on!"  
  
Ursula's forehead creased in a frown. "Is this even about the gnome?"  
  
Cruella's stared at her, lips parted but jaw clinched tight, and all but radiated betrayal.  
  
"Go to hell," she spat, then turned on her heel and hastened upstairs.  
  
"No -- come on, Cru," Ursula groaned. "I didn't mean it like that!"  
  
But Cruella ignored her, feet pounding hard on the steps, followed by the slam of their bedroom door.

She would be up there, Ursula knew, until she remembered she didn't have to be, and past experience had taught her it was best to leave well enough alone until she did. Strange things, memories: a jab at the right one -- or wrong one, as was the case -- could provoke the most ironic of reactions.

Guiltily, Ursula retrieved the battered gnome and assessed it thoroughly. Possibly reparable, but was it worth the trouble? The chances of it ever making it back into their yard looked, at this juncture, slim.  
  
And then she saw it, sown in the split, its spindly arms pawing blindly at the air as babies do.  
  
"... Son of a bitch."  
  
No wonder she hadn't sensed it -- it wasn't an enchantment, per se: not the kind ordinarily performed on inanimate object, the fabric of its spellcaster made readily apparent in the weave of the magic overlaying the object itself. This was magic inside-out, not a spell cast but a spell born, wearing the wood of the gnome like an organic mecha suit -- literally, a gundam seed, an idea probably got from a glance at one of Henry's comic books.  
  
As if she didn't already feel badly enough. She was going to be on apology-martini duty for _weeks._  
  
Ursula sighed. Oh, well.

At least it hadn't been a camera.

 

* * *

 

"Coming!" Mary Margaret called as she tripped towards the door of the loft she shared with her husband and son.  
  
The bell rang again regardless.  
  
"Okay, okay," she mumbled, then exclaimed with counterfeit cheer upon opening the door, "Ursula! What brings you here?"  
  
She barely had time to register the filthy and mangled gnome Ursula held in her hands before it was shoved unceremoniously into her own.  
  
"You're a real asshole, you know that?" said the sea witch. "A mandrake? Really?"  
  
"Oh come on, it was just a joke! A little new-to-the-neighborhood hazing."  
  
"Yeah, you know who hazes people? Assholes."  
  
Mary Margaret's false smile faded. "I'm sorry, but a villain doesn't exactly have a leg to stand on when it comes to lecturing others on what does or doesn't count as malicious behavior."  
  
"Of course, you're right, people who've refined things into an art form usually have no idea what they're talking about. Silly me."  
  
"An art form? What, was your sprawl on the ground that time I knocked you out with sleeping dust meant to evoke some abstract concept about the tenuous overlap of dreams and reality?"  
  
Ursula took a step forward. "Dear, sweet child, if you want to know what nightmares are made of, I've filled entire trenches with bones of your kind, and thousands of bellies with the meat."  
  
Mary Margaret's nostrils flared, catching a brief whiff of salt and rot, and she swallowed back a sudden twinge at the corners of her jaw -- telling herself, Ursula knew, that it was caused by nausea, and not hunger.  
  
"Are you threatening me?" she demanded.  
  
" _I'm_ not doing anything, and neither is Cruella, and you need to get that through your self-righteous little skull, because we're not going anywhere." It almost sounded like the truth, even to Ursula's own ears.  
  
"I got rid of you two once before," Mary Margaret reminded her, voice low, and Ursula smirked.  
  
"Careful, princess. If you want to take credit for that piece of collateral damage, you had better be prepared to own _all_ of what you caused."  
  
Mary Margaret's expression darkened even as her face grew even paler than usual, and Ursula felt a rush of old, familiar delight at having drawn first blood.  
  
"It's funny," she went on, "I used to wonder where supposedly humble heroes got their god complexes from, but when I think of all the people who've died in your name ..."  
  
Heroes, Ursula had long ago learned, could never harden completely. Always there was a notch of guilt in their eyes, like a chip in a teacup.  
  
"I didn't kill them," Mary Margaret spoke around the nicked lip of the cup. "Regina killed them. I'm not responsible for her choices."  
  
"Yeah, you keep throwing out that bath water," said Ursula. "I hate to break it to you, angelfish, but you're a hero -- it's _always_ about you. Even now. You think Cruella's and my being here is only about _our_ second chances? If you want history to repeat itself, then by all means keep lying yourself to sleep at night. But this time, there's no one else's child to play whipping boy to yours, and I can assure you Cruella and I aren't chasing after _anything_ that doesn't belong to us. If I were you?" She looked the other woman up and down, amusement and distaste clearly readable in her dark, dark eyes. Snow White had been a princess, but only barely a queen, and never, ever a goddess, deity complex or no. "I wouldn't try my luck."  
  
Mary Margaret stared at a random point on Ursula's cheek, and told herself she was looking the sea witch in the eye. "Thanks for the advice. You can go now."  
  
Ursula backed up a pace, smiling. "Not far, though," she promised with a wink, before turning and starting for home.

 

* * *

 

Ursula returned home to find their yard still a wreck but the Panther stowed safely in the garage, and the house itself was brightly lit and brassy with music when she opened the door. She found Cruella in the living room, dressed now in drapey black loungewear, knees tucked to her chest, nursing a neat tumbler of gin. She bristled visibly when Ursula came in, but didn't move away when the sea witch sat down beside her on the sofa.

"I'm sorry," said Ursula.  
  
Cruella sipped her gin and looked away.  
  
"I should have given you the benefit of the doubt."  
  
A thickly-drawn eyebrow arched. "Well, that's not something one usually does with crazy people, is it?"  
  
"You're not crazy. You're just a little ... amplified, sometimes."  
  
Cruella's head flopped sideways to scowled at her. "Getting colder, darling."  
  
Ursula unzipped her handbag. "Would it warm things up if I said you were only half wrong?"  
  
Cruella scoffed. "If you think you can toady your way back into my good graces, you are _sorely_ mistak--"  
  
Her voice fell away mid-rant and her eyes grew large as Ursula presented her with the squirming, doll-shaped root.  
  
"... _I knew it!_ " she rasped, snatching the decidedly ugly little creature out of the sea witch's hand. "Those utter _snakes!_ But ... but it's alive." Her brow creased in puzzlement.  
  
"I figure the gnome took the brunt of the impact, and that's why you were able to throttle it," Ursula explained. "Basically its car was death proof, even against yours."  
  
Cruella looked disappointed, but rebounded quickly. "Where did they even find one of these? Magic can function here but it isn't exactly growing on trees -- or _as_ them."  
  
"I didn't ask. But if I had to guess, there's one person in particular who's known to have an affinity for and conceivably access to eldritch flora."  
  
Cruella remembered the flash of blue she'd seen out the window, just before the gnome had begun behaving oddly, and the timid-looking young woman -- _fairy,_ she corrected -- who had no doubt been sent to keep tabs on how the prank was progressing.  
  
She sneered. "Never did get on well with nuns."  
  
"I would never have guessed," Ursula deadpanned. "So, what do you wanna do with it?"  
  
Cruella tilted her head in contemplation and carved a half-moon mark in the root's bulbous belly with her thumbnail, the corners of her mouth curling up at the way it writhed.  
  
She glanced at the drink in her other hand.  
  
"... Empty the vase on the table in the foyer and meet me out the back."  
  
Ursula did as requested, evicting the irises in residence temporarily to the downstairs half-bath sink before she joined Cruella on their back patio. The night was young, but now overcast and dark, which neither of them had trouble navigating. Ursula's eyes were designed for the murk of the depths, and Cruella had learned at a very young age the tricks of surviving in shadowy spaces.  
  
"On the ground, darling," Cruella murmured.  
  
Ursula set the vase on the stone, and Cruella dropped the root in the vase. Its thready little hands clinked in futile desperation against the glass.  
  
Cruella poured what remained of her gin overtop it, then withdrew a small box from the pocket of her trousers. Its contents rattled as she smiled at Ursula and shook it giddily.  
  
"Care to do the honors?"  
  
They both knew it wasn't an offer so much as a necessity, but Ursula had always had the good taste to play along.  
  
"With pleasure," she said, and struck a match.  
  
Cruella watched the mandrake alight, satisfaction and childlike delight dancing alongside the fire's reflection in her eyes.  
  
Ursula watched Cruella, and remembered her words by the lake -- _Don't let me burn._ A casual request that seemed now to take on a much broader meaning.

 

* * *

 

She hoped it wasn't telling that later, as they showered off the sand and soil of the day, Cruella hissed and shied away when the spray hit her back, and glared at Ursula with accusatory eyes.  
  
"You promised, darling," she grumped.  
  
Ursula sighed, made a grasping motion in the air, and funneled the water into a gentler stream.  
  
"Technically, you demanded. And it's not my fault you and Moby Dick share a melanin content," she said.  
  
"Did you just compare me to a whale?"  
  
"One that eats squid, if that makes any difference."  
  
Cruella considered both possible definitions of this, and must have decided it did, if her lack of further vocal offense was any indication.  
  
Afterward, Ursula found a pump bottle of no doubt needlessly expensive aloe vera amongst the many toiletries stashed beneath her girlfriend's side of the double sink, and stifled a laugh when she entered the bedroom to find Cruella already sprawled expectantly nude on her front, dead center of the bed, as though she'd drowned in duvet.  
  
Ursula climbed aboard, straddled Cruella's narrow ass, and set to rubbing cool blue gel into the pink skin of the other witch's back.  
  
Cruella moaned luxuriously -- and then yelped in pain.  
  
"Watch the nails, darling! Why don't you use your tentacles? No scratchy bits on those."  
  
"Because you got the stuff with menthol in it, and it tastes like shit. Now shut up, unless you want to do this yourself."  
  
Cruella huffed a breath between the pillows. "If I peel ..." she warned.  
  
"You'll what, make a coat for Pongo so the two of you can match?"  
  
Whatever retort Cruella might have bandied back was interrupted by a looped series of melodious screams coming from the vicinity of the tote bag they had used to lug around their lakeside supplies.  
  
Cruella propped herself up on her elbows while Ursula fished her cell phone out of the bag with a tentacle and muted the sound. The screen confirmed what the ringtone implied: that _Short Stuff_ was attempting to call (Ursula had talked her out of entering him as _Rumpelforeskin_ ).  
  
Cruella opened her mouth, but didn't move to take it. She'd been looking forward to this -- they both had -- but ...  
  
Hesitation leashed her to its heels. She looked back at Ursula, who was looking askance in that way she did whenever she thought something that was about to happen was bound to be unpleasant, and felt an unexpected mantle of reassurance gently descend upon her sore shoulders, just as a different, heavier, more metallic weight lifted off of them.  
  
"Who rings at this hour, anyway?" she asked, tongue darting out to wet her lips as she shrugged into the feeling. "Rude ..."  
  
Ursula's eyes met hers, surprise and, after a moment, something like happiness bubbling to the surface of their sable depths.  
  
_I knew you were trouble when you walked in,_ the phone started up again.  
  
"Turn it off, darling."  
  
_So shame on me now-ow, I knew--_  
  
"He'll have to find his own way back in."  
  
Cruella could very nearly feel the snap of thread between her teeth -- the satisfaction of a stitch completed, of a tie being cut.  
  
Ursula tossed the phone back in the bag, and finished gelling the small of Cruella's back. "He won't be happy with us when he does."  
  
Cruella rolled her eyes and clicked her tongue. "Who gives a fig? Look, _s_ _omeone_ is going to find that repugnant little Author. I may be a villain, but I'm not an idiot, and my money's on the people who always win being the ones to do it." Ursula slid off of her and settled herself back against the headboard while Cruella knelt up.  
  
"So we're on their side now?" the sea witch asked. "The heroes?"  
  
"God, no. We're on _our_ side, darling, same as always. We let them keep doing the legwork whilst we sidle up nice and cozy ..." Cruella sidled, walking two fingers atop Ursula's shoulder towards her neck.  
  
Ursula leaned in, a mischievous smirk on her lips. "... And wait for the opportune moment."  
  
Cruella kissed her smiling, and felt the tug of two threads knotting irrevocably together, preparing to weave a new yarn.  
  
"But," she said, and feared it a little less this time, "until then, we have _now,_ and _now_ prepares spectacular suburban revenge."  
  
"Involving what, pray tell?"  
  
"Every lawn flamingo in New England that I can lay my hands on."

Cruella's eyes danced again, this time with their own indigenous fire -- but Ursula's heart was warmed by it, and she decided to let this one blaze.


End file.
